


In The End

by lassiewrites (allthegoodusernamesarealwaysgone)



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: F/M, Fic Exchange, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, This is the first piece of fic I have written in about ten years holy shit, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 07:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10872135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthegoodusernamesarealwaysgone/pseuds/lassiewrites
Summary: After the battle of Roarhaven, Saracen Rue searches for Dexter's body among the dead.





	In The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> My half of a fic trade with hypnotic_spellz on tumblr. This is the first piece of fic I've ever published and the first piece I've actually written in about a decade, so I hope you like it love

He walks the battlefield for hours after it’s all over. Roarhaven - the new Roarhaven, Ravel’s Roarhaven, is carnage, fire burning unchecked amongst the rubble, the air thick with smoke. At some point, an energy blast had whistled past his head, missing him by an inch, and his ears are still ringing. There’s a gash in his side, and he clamps his hand over it, gritting his teeth and moving through the pain. It missed his vital organs, and he has more important things to worry about.

He turns over bodies as he moves, numbly, seeking out the ones with blond hair or broad shoulders, letting them go as soon as he doesn’t recognise their faces. So many people he doesn’t know. He’s spent the last couple of years in Roarhaven, and he never saw this coming. Saracen Rue knows things. But he didn’t know enough to see this.

He remembers seeing Dexter go down, fought his way through a warlock and vaulted two wretchlings to get to him, but collided with a fighter from his own side, coming the other way, and then Darquesse had arrived, and by the time he’d had time to think about Dexter again, he had no idea where he was. That was the problem with this new city. In the old Roarhaven, he’d have found Dexter in minutes. Now, with all the gleaming new buildings - not so gleaming anymore, charred and covered in soot - and new street plan, he had no idea where it even was that Dexter had been blasted.

So he keeps looking.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been out there when he hears a voice calling his name, barely manages to focus on it until someone touches him on the shoulder.

“Mr. Rue?” the voice says again, and then, tentatively, “Saracen?”

It takes him a moment to place the young mage’s face, as filthy and shellshocked as his own must be. He’d come to her rescue once before, when she’d been getting harrassed by that sad sack, Dacanay. Ieni.

“Detective Pleasant sent me to find you,” she says. Her right arm is in a sling, and she’s moving with a pained stiffness that tells him she’s hurt her leg. She should be in the medical wing. If they’re sending out injured young mages on errands, there are more wounded than he wants to think about right now. “Dexter Vex is in the hospital.”

Saracen will find her, days later, and thank her for telling him. But at the time, he barely even realises that he’s walked past her without saying a word, without even looking at her. She doesn’t matter, not then. Nothing does. Nothing but the fact that Vex’s stupid ass is hurt.

He finds Skulduggery and Valkyrie in the corridor outside the OR. Valkyrie is sitting on the uncomfortable plastic chairs, leaning into Skulduggery’s side, with his suit jacket draped around her shoulders, and his hand resting between her shoulder blades. There are messy tear tracks down her face; she’s been crying, really crying.

“They’re in there with him now,” Skulduggery says immediately when he hears Saracen approaching. “Synecdoche and three others. You look terrible.”

Saracen peers through the window, can make out through a crack in the blinds the shapes of the sanctuary doctors moving around a prone figure on a bed. Dexter. His voice is hoarse. “What happened to him?”

“Darquesse,” says Skulduggery, and there’s a little noise that might’ve been a sob from Valkyrie. He gives her shoulder a squeeze. “She ripped out the remnant. Broke plenty of bones, doing it. But if Tanith is any proof, if he lives through the surgery, he’ll be himself again.”

It’s meant to be comfort. But Skulduggery has never been very good at that. Saracen tilts his head forward, lets it rest against the cold glass of the window, watches the dark shapes move in the room beyond and tries to close his mind to what’s happening in there. It’s not the first time Dexter has been hurt in a battle, he tells himself. They’ve all taken their fair share of injuries. They’ve all scraped past the jaws of death. It can happen again.

Valkyrie makes a bizarre little keening noise and Skulduggery lowers himself into the seat beside her, pulling her in close and resting his chin on the top of her head. He’s humming, a tune Saracen recognises as an old Gaelic lullaby. Gods, but that tune is old, almost as old as he is.

“I’m sorry, Saracen,” Valkyrie blurts in between little sobs. “This is all my fault.”

It’s not. He knows that. Saracen Rue knows things. He knows all sorts about his fellow Dead Men - could tell her a thing or two about the skeleton sitting next to her that would make her hair curl - and he doesn’t intend on holding this against her. The poor kid - he remembers his first big battle, the days afterwards spent in a numb haze, alternately sobbing and blazing with adrenaline. But his first big battle had also been Dexter’s first big battle, and they’d gotten through it together.

“You should get that stitched up,” Skulduggery suggests. “He won’t be out for hours, yet.”

An order, thinly disguised as a suggestion. And though Saracen is loathe to leave, he’s no use here. He squeezes Valkyrie’s shoulder on his way past.

*  
It’s Skulduggery who comes to get him this time. He’s lost track of how long he’s been in the hospital. He’d had his side stitched up, and some other injuries tended to, while Dexter was in theatre. Valkyrie had come to tell him that the operation had been successful - one of Dexter’s broken ribs had pierced a lung and it had been touch and go for a while, but Synecdoche had pulled him through. The girl looked exhausted, and Saracen had numbly given her a hug; they both needed it. And since then, he’d been sitting at Dexter’s bedside, trying not to fall asleep as the post-battle fatigue hit. It was horrific, watching him lie there, motionless, his face black and blue and swollen where bones had needed resetting. There was a metal place in his jaw now, resetting it, and a drain poking out from his side. His hand, knuckles scuffed and raw, was in both of Saracen’s, and he ran his thumb back and forth over Dexter’s palm every now and then, hoping to tickle him, to feel those fingers curl over and squeeze.

He’d only come away to get a coffee.

“He’s awake,” says Skulduggery from behind him. “I think he’s asking for you.”

Saracen spots Valkyrie on his way back to the room, curled up now on a line of those plastic chairs, fast asleep. Skulduggery’s jacket is still draped over her, and that’s all he has time to notice before he rounds the corner and pushes past a doctor in the doorway.

Dexter’s eyes are open, and Saracen has never seen a more beautiful thing in his life. He lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“Hey.”

Dexter doesn’t - can’t - answer him, not yet. Not while his jaw is mending. But he weakly lifts an arm, extends it in Saracen’s direction, and he rushes to retake his seat at the bedside and lace their fingers together. He could laugh. He could cry. He’s not sure which to go with, and ends up doing both.

“I thought I lost you,” he tells Dexter, making a mental note to hit him later, once he’s healed. “Never, ever do that to me again. I will kill you. I will dig you up and kill you again. You bastard. How dare you.”

He pauses in his angry litany, never once letting go of Dexter’s hand, and blurts, “You look like shit.”

From the tiny facial movement Dexter makes, followed by a hiss of pain, he just tried to laugh. His hand flies up to his chest, where it presses for a moment, his eyes shut tight. Saracen leans over him, fussing uselessly, and Dexter uses his free hand to flap him away. Saracen can almost hear the frustration that would be in his voice. _Good God man, what are you, my grandmother?_

“I love you.”

He doesn’t realise he’s blurted it out until he sees Dexter’s eyebrows disappear under his hairline.

They don’t say it often. He can think of a handful of occasions, over three hundred years, where he’s told Dexter that. Dexter says it even less. They’ve always been the sort who speak with actions, rather than words.

“I...I don’t tell you enough.” He shrugs, awkwardly. “I thought you died out there. And I never said it enough. But I do. I love you.”

Dexter’s eyes soften, and he brings Saracen’s hand up to his cheek, presses it palm-down against the side of his face, and leans into the touch. Saracen scoots forward to the edge of his seat, and if he leans over he can touch their foreheads together, tangle his hands gently in Dexter’s scruffy hair and breathe in the scent of blood and magic and smoke that won’t come off him for days.

Dexter presses as close as he can get without shifting too much, makes an awkward little noise, without moving his mouth. It sounds almost like, I love you, too.


End file.
